


Daughter of Naboo

by minnabird



Series: Ignite 'verse [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Cultural Differences, Gen, Home, Identity Issues, Jedi Leia Organa, Planet Naboo (Star Wars), Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:47:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22704955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minnabird/pseuds/minnabird
Summary: “Homeworld” is a tricky concept when you are raised far from family.Leia’s first homeworld, the home of her heart, is a gentle one.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Padmé Amidala & Leia Organa
Series: Ignite 'verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582570
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	Daughter of Naboo

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the universe of my ongoing AU, It's Not Fire You Want to Ignite. You can read it without looking at that one, if you want, but you might need to know that both Leia's parents are alive and un-Fallen; she and Luke were raised mostly at the Jedi Temple because the Clone Wars lasted longer and it was safest; and they both trained as Jedi Padawans, although only Luke went on to become a Knight.

“Homeworld” is a tricky concept when you are raised far from family.

Leia’s first homeworld, the home of her heart, is a gentle one.

* * *

Leia remembers with startling clarity the first time she visited Naboo.

She was four, she knows, because they had just begun learning to put Aurebesh letters together and sound out words. In an ecstasy of new knowledge, Leia had been showing off for her parents by pointing out words wherever she could. The ship they boarded left her frustrated: the displays and plaques all used symbols that looked like they might be letters, but looked nothing like the ones she knew.

If she recalled correctly, it had taken Padmé the better part of a day to understand her daughter’s stormy reaction to the ship. (Luke, by contrast, had taken up a post in the cockpit and utterly charmed the pilot by remaining riveted to her every action). “It’s just Futhork,” she had said, pulling Leia into her lap and tracing her finger over a letter on the display. “See this? It’s like the _aurek_ you learned in class.”

“It looks more like _isk_ ,” Leia said, frowning. “Why does it have to be different?”

“We Naboo have a history of our own,” Padmé said softly, in a voice like she was telling a story. “We keep it alive through art, through music, through clothing and customs and dance, and yes, through language.” The letters on the display lit Padmé’s splayed fingers an eerie blue, making them look almost transparent at the tips. “At home, children learn Futhork alongside Aurebesh.”

“Why don’t we?”

Padmé was silent for a long moment, and Leia stared at the strange, elegant letters, willing them to make sense. The curves and delicate flicks were nothing like the angular symbols she’d been learning in the creche, now that she was really looking at them. “Temple students don’t need to know them,” Padmé said. “But if you want to learn, I’ll teach you whenever I can.”

Even at four, Leia knew that didn’t mean it would happen soon. But it soothed her, all the same.

* * *

Naboo were supposed to enjoy the arts. Her cousin Pooja played a stringed instrument called the gilharp and sang like a bird; Ryoo painted. From time to time, if she was feeling happy enough and Anakin goaded just right, Padmé would read her poetry aloud.

Leia picked up and put down several musical instruments, used and then burned sketchbooks, and hunched in frustration over books about imagery and meter.

It didn’t matter to Luke the way it did Leia, but he could tell it bothered her. “Mom doesn’t pay much attention to it either,” he said. “Neither do Aunt Saché or Aunt Sabé. You don’t have to compete with the cousins.”

Competing was so not the point. The point was this: Leia might be a Jedi Initiate, but she was also Naboo. And this was what Naboo _did_.

What she couldn’t put into words was the yearning to belong to this planet that had nurtured her mother and her mother’s mother and so on down the ages. It was the kind of partiality that Jedi, taken into the Temple so young, were not supposed to have. She was homesick and nostalgic for a planet she had never lived on.

She and Luke spent a week on Naboo when they were thirteen, in the hottest, thickest part of summer. Usually they saw Naboo in the spring, during a time when the Legislative Assembly went into recess and the Lake Country was at its prettiest. Midsummer, they discovered, played host to a festival involving bonfires and music and dancing.

The moment the drumbeats came in, louder than her heartbeat, drowning out all sensation in favor of driving rhythm, Leia was entranced. She watched as family and friends joined hands and came together, broke apart, spun and stepped in what were obviously well-known patterns. It looked like a lightsaber kata. It looked like losing touch with one’s singleness, and becoming part of a whole.

Sabé was the first to notice Leia sitting at the edge of the firelight, her eyes wide. She held out a hand. “Here. Let me show you the steps.”

The steps were easy to pick up. Familiar faces met her as she let herself be passed from person to person, laughing with her father and mother, sharing grins with Luke, letting music and movement carry her until her feet ached.

She walked back to the house arm in arm with Padmé, electrified and tired and content all at once. Padmé leaned her head against Leia’s. “I’m glad you could come for this,” Padmé murmured to her.

“I want to come next year,” Leia said.

When she went back to the Temple, she started researching classical Naboo dance. As she learned to move her body through the steps and contortions of the dances, so she added grace and flexibility to her lightsaber forms. For once, her Jedi identity and her Naboo one felt comfortable together.

* * *

In years to come, she will say she left the Jedi to pursue politics: a neat transition, thoughtfully undertaken.

At age sixteen, nothing about Leia’s heart or her life feels neat. She feels ready to crack in two. There is no reason for it: no reason for this purposeless anger, or for rage and grief to have overwhelmed her so thoroughly on her last mission. A Jedi must learn to process and let go of her most destructive emotions. Master Billaba tries to counsel her through it, but Leia is too rattled to listen, too restless to settle into meditation, and too afraid of herself, just now, to feel she belongs among the Jedi.

At first she goes to Luke, who lets her sob out some of her grief. There had been so much needless death on Rikel IV. If she can’t make her peace with it, she will take the comfort of someone whose shoulder she has always relied on.

Then, Luke is off on another mission with Master Plo, and numbly, Leia begins to think, and finally to talk.

The life of a Jedi Knight is one of violence, always, always tempered by compassion and thoughtfulness. Leia cannot trust herself to be immersed in one and remember the others. This is not the first time she has struggled. It will be the worst time. She makes herself that promise.

And then she goes home.

Leia has never been on Naboo as a permanent resident. It’s an unexpectedly joyful balm. She settles into the routine of the household with ease; it’s familiar from her visits. She reaches out to family, and visits with her mother’s friends. She sneaks into Theed on rest-day nights and strikes up a flirtation with a boy who dances the piollo like he was born to it. (He probably was).

And she follows her mother to the Assembly and takes in the goings-on there.

She talks with Saché, now the Governor of Naboo, and draws out more and more details.

She begins to read again: Naboo history, galactic politics, trade policy, and anything and everything to do with the Clone Wars and their aftermath.

When she returns to Coruscant, she returns as a representative of Naboo, of her sector, comfortable on both worlds but belonging to one.

**Author's Note:**

> I first posted this in a google doc on Twitter last month, and I wasn't a hundred percent sure about posting it here. But I love this AU, and I loved exploring Leia's Naboo heritage and how she interacted with it growing up. Hope you all enjoyed, too! (I swear, more of the main story is coming; SWBB fic and writer's block have eaten me alive).


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